• Student

Taking a gap year for a board position in Brussels

Teddy van Amelsvoort will soon be swapping her Eindhoven student house for a rather special house in Brussels. Her new home as of August is exclusively for board members of AEGEE-Europe, a select group she will be joining this coming academic year. The TU/e student of Psychology & Technology has a message for students: “Grasp the opportunities that come your way during your student years.”

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photo S-F / Shutterstock

AEGEE is a European student association with thirteen thousand members, spread among 146 local associations. Its members live throughout Europe and organize exchanges, workshops and conferences for and with each other. For some conferences, the theme is decided democratically at meetings of the members. Called ' Agorae', these meetings are held every fall and spring, always at a different location. If they wanted to, the student members could spend a whole year travelling from one event to the next held by the various local associations. And so AEGEE has often been dubbed the student travel association, but ask any member and they will reply without hesitation, “It is much more than that!”

PATISSERIE AFTER THE SPRING AGORA, TO CELEBRATE HER ELECTION. Photo | Teddy van Amelsvoort

And Teddy van Amelsvoort is no exception. She came across AEGEE in her first year of higher education (2017/18). “I was really interested to see how an international association like this is organized and the kind of opportunities you have within it. At the end of the year I was the treasurer.” The year after she was the vice-president and now she is scaling up to the highest position at European level.

Reflection

With the end of her bachelor's in sight, Van Amelsvoort wondered which master's she might want to do. Many P&T students move into Human Technology Interaction. But data analysis also held an appeal. Would the Master's of Data Science and Entrepreneurship be a better choice? What also got her thinking was the realization that throughout the four years she had spent getting her degree, she had “found the association more enjoyable than my study program”.

She decided to run as a candidate for the position of general board member and at the last members' meeting - held online, like the two before it - she was elected to the fifty-ninth board of AEGEE. “My exact position will be decided later on, but I'd like to support the 146 local associations.”

Van Amelsvoort during a board meeting at AEGEE-Eindhoven. Photo | private archief Teddy van Amelsvoort
Experience

She has already spent the past year getting some experience under her belt, working with a cluster of fourteen locations, among them West Germany, Ukraine and Belarus. The groups are not organized geographically into regional departments; in this case the members of the locations involved got together and chose their own name. “They came up with Teddybearea,” says Teddy van Amelsvoort, laughing. “Every local association has its own balance between informative events and social activities. Some have only the occasional drinks party, others hold a weekly discussion evening. I tried to help where necessary, for example by helping to write a plan to improve member recruitment or discussing how to deal with a difficult member. Sometimes, it was enough just to offer a listening ear.”

She is overjoyed with this ‘gap year’, which will give her time to think about her future, and the chance to live in a house in Brussels with other board members of the association so close to her heart.

THE FRONT DOOR THAT VAN AMELSVOORT CAN CALL HER OWN FOR A YEAR. Photo | Private collection Teddy van Amelsfoort

Incidentally, she is not the first person from TU/e to live in the CD house. CD, which stands for Comité Directeur, is the name of the board of AEGEE-Europe. Diederik de Wit, who also completed the P&T bachelor's, has been the president of AEGEE-Europe during this past year while studying for his master's in Estonia.

Self-development

Anyone keen to set up a group (subassociation) within AEGEE is helped to do so. These groups are often connected with a university. Eindhoven has had its own group since 1989.

Van Amelsvoort has, by her own account, much to thank AEGEE-Eindhoven for. “I arrived at TU/e planning to complete a bachelor's within three years and then to move straight to a master's. Thanks to AEGEE, I found out where my heart truly lies. I have learned to form an opinion and to convey a standpoint. Actually, I've become much less shy. This is something I'd wish for every student: go and discover where your interest lies and grasp the opportunities that come your way during your student years. Getting to the end of your studies in double-quick time is something I now view as a missed opportunity.”

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